"You're outside a book shop? You don't have a pension fund? KEEP WALKING!"

I was channel flipping.

Suddenly, there was Suze Orman, finger pointing toward me and head thrust forward like Uncle Sam or Lord Kitchener in one of those “Your Country Needs YOU” recruitment posters.

“. . . and remember,” Suze was concluding, “People first! Then money! Then things!”

That brief glimpse is all I know of Suze’s ideas on this topic but – like any good consultant, academic, or journalist – I’m going to seize hold of her idea and gratefully make it my own

Gifted adults and the meaning of money

I’m fortunate in that I have the kind of practice that literally covers the financial universe.

Gifted adults: all the same under the skin.

This is because my focus is on psychographics rather than demographics and because working over the telephone means I can work with a much larger client pool than most.

The common factor between the richest and the poorest, the highly energized and the stuck, the tightly-focused and the confused, is their giftedness.

They share the same basic qualities – intuition, awareness, creativity – and are equally fierce in their insistence on maintaining autonomy, asserting their right to their unique vision, and holding on to their sense of identity and integrity.

Yet the financial manifestations of their giftedness vary hugely.

Gifted doesn’t mean gilded

To one gifted person a dollar is something to give to a charity. While to another it is something to add to their personal fortune.

These different actions appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum but I’d suggest they both have a common source: the need for insurance – or reassurance.

The gold wall that keeps threats out can also imprison us within.

The giver protects himself from a fate worse than death by maintaining multiple layers between himself and the less-fortunate. The keeper protects himself by building a rampart of gold.

The under-performing gifted

Sadly, I think I have to say that the gifted community as a whole tends to underperform financially. This judgement is purely anecdotal and may just be a projection of my personal self-assessment.

However . . . how many times have we looked at someone and thought: “With all they have to offer, how come they aren’t doing better?”

So can Suze help?

Even the most motivated advisor cannot force their mentees to take action.

However, Suze can at least help make something conscious that might otherwise remain unconscious. And she can encourage us to think about our personal balance of money, people and things.

Gifted we may be, but blind spots and asynchronous development can certainly impede our path to greater riches in any one of those categories.

Where’s your emphasis?

What kind of gifted adult money-manager are you?

Let’s take a look at three different prioritizations for some clues:

Money-Things-People (MTP)

This is a popular hierarchy with all groups of people, gifted or not.

Gifted intensity and high success can lead to lofty isolation.

Why? I think it’s because  a ‘money-first’ strategy simplifies decision-making. Also, the emphasis on tangible wealth is very acceptable – even highly admired – within society.

Some people condemn this prioritization as actually being anti-social or just plain ‘wrong’ . But it’s really a perfectly legitimate  way to play life. 

After all, possessions – things – are just toys and/or fetish objects. And we all have a need both to play and to feel secure.  Acquiring them can be a lot of fun, too.

The risk for gifted individuals pursing this path is that they play fiercely when they play at all.

So their intensity and passion for capitalizing on every financial opportunity can drive away people whose commitment to the game is not so great.

This can result in the gifted-and-successful being denied access to the emotional and other resources that might help them live more richly than they can achieve on their own.

Things-People-Money (TPM)

It was hard for me to see how this prioritization might play out.

But then an image came to me of a collector. It was two images, actually. One was a collector at an art auction, spending millions, while the other was of a vast hall full of enthusiasts exchanging Star Trek memorabilia.

Walking the ridge on tip toe? Being captivated by objects can lead to danger.

In both cases, their passion for collecting was paramount in their lives and led them to gather with groups of people. In neither case was the accumulation of money privileged over the things or the people: they just had very different amounts of it.

Someone else who puts things before people and before the accumulation of money is the impulsive thief that takes jewels and other objects rather than cash.

A more altruistic version would be the kind of charity that accepts donations in kind and distributes them among the poor.

The truly gifted TPM person must be the artist, the creator of things. Unfortunately, the creative preoccupation is often to the detriment of their relationships with people and frequently with a total disregard for making money.

I suspect that many gifted individuals fit that picture . . .

People-Money-Things (PMT)

This, as Ms Orman suggests, is the most balanced ordering available to us.

Properly managed, one pool can feed a thousand plants.

To start from the bottom, if we take care of our money by being cautious in our acquisition of things, we’ll have it available for people when they – including ourselves – really need it.

And we won’t hold back from making any necessary expenditure: our stash will be ample and comfortably protected.

It’s surprising how far you can travel in the face of misfortune if you adopt this prioritization.

Which is a comforting thought, given that this order should be fairly easy for gifted individuals to sustain. Despite our fiercely maintained independence, we are often very people-oriented.

However, there is a risk that if your distribution of the three categories is, say, 90-6-4, then your over-emphasis on people is going to be damaging for you and ultimately for everyone else.

So make sure you have plenty in the pot before you give some away – whether to others or even to indulge some expensive need of your own.

And I’m not just talking about money here, but love and compassion, too.

The gifted cash box

I think that for most gifted individuals money is not something to be pursued, hoarded, collected, counted, and managed for its own sake.

I don't care what you do with it! Just shove it under the mattress!

Indeed, most of the wealthy gifted that I know find it irritating to have to deal with the money that’s come to them.

Whether this cash is a by-product of their joy and success at work or something they’ve inherited, its management – not the cash itself – is seen as an obstacle to getting on and doing more interesting, more valuable things.

Gifted people, I suspect, are not typically succesful investors. Their vision tends to be tied to their personal value system and therefore doesn’t resonate with the consumer tastes on which so much wealth depends.

And what about me?

Do I fit Suze Orman’s preferred profile?

Sadly, probably not. I do put people first, certainly, but I also have a tendency to buy things – especially books and boats – before I have my 12 months’ safety fund built up.

So this leaves my prioritization as:

People-Things-Money

But it’s a pretty close thing. Sort of 60-21-19.

"See what happens when a gifted adult meditates on money!"

I’ve done many motivational tests over the years and they all report that my interest in money is substantially below average. By that, they typically mean that money is not much of a driver for me.

This is true. But it’s not the same as saying I wouldn’t be happy to make loads of it doing something that was motivated by things closer to my heart.

For example, this country (the USA) spends $700 billion a year on ‘defence’.

I don’t want any of it if its goal is to bend others to our will.

However, I’ll be happy to take just one percent if its intent is to help others discover their own true will.

I think that would be a much more effective defence, as well.

And I would be gloriously rich.

So bring it on . . . .

Soon!

The parable of the sower has particular relevance for gifted adults because it highlights the vital – as in genuinely life-maintaining – importance of our environment.

"Then you ask why I don't live here? Honey, how come you don't move?" Bob Dylan "On the road again"

Gifted individuals have a great capacity for the state of what I call “easy survival” but we can find it very hard to thrive in a way that gives us a complete sense of fulfillment.

We typically blame ourselves for this. However, it is not necessarily due to our shortcomings as humans but may simply arise from the lack of resources around us.

Here’s the parable, via Wikipedia:

“Behold, there went out a sower to sow:

And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some a hundred.

And he said unto them, He that has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Isn’t that beautiful? “And some fell upon good ground, and did yield fruit . . . ”

Yielding your own precious fruit

Compared to us, a seed is a relatively simple life form. It may have a spirit but its resources for life fulfillment are basically limited by the skill of the sower.

Anatomy is destiny

We, however, are a different kettle of fish. We have all kinds of resources so that even if our sowers were less than mediocre, we have some capacity for improving the soil we landed on and also for moving to “good ground”.

This capacity is not absolute. We are constrained by the facts of our birth – Freud’s declaration that “Anatomy is destiny” is a valid rule of thumb – and determining what constitutes “good ground” is a massive challenge in itself.

Three-in-one

The challenge of finding the right environment is hugely complicated by our existence as biopsychospiritual entities. It means that a diet of phosphates, sun and water are hopelessly inadequate to our needs. To thrive, we must have access to at least three categories of ‘nutrient’ within our surroundings: physical, intellectual and emotional sustenance.

We could add a spiritual dimension to that. However, it seems to me that our connection to the universe is with us wherever we go so it’s not significant for this discussion of a more material ‘ground’.

In addition to needing three categories of nutrient we also, compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, place massive demands on our nutritional resources.

Again, the more gifted we are, the more demand we place on the available nutrients. Just as gifted athletes require more than average food, training facilities, time and sponsorship to thrive, so those gifted in other ways make their own special demands on their surroundings.

Virtually there

A worldwide web of enrichment or deception?

A major question lies open for me, having to do with the Internet and access to the world wide web. It can make an otherwise empty life seem tolerable and offers many rewarding paths lined with the kinds of ‘berries’ that gifted adults seek and feed off on their explorations.

I am concerned, though, that it may be a chimera: that its branches may hold false fruit in that they pacify our immediate restlessness without our being forced into action. It’s another variation on the old ‘golden handcuffs’ syndrome of working for a company whose reward system is just enough to keep you from leaving to discover something better.

Feed on . . .

I shall be taking a closer look at different aspects of gifted nutrition in future posts. I hope this one may have started you thinking and would love to hear your own ideas about what nourishes you and what looks good but ultimately tastes of cardboard.

Referring to the parable, who or what are your “fowls of the air”, your stony ground, your thorns or your good ground . . . ? Let us know.

"Each day I see my giftedness more clearly reflected before me."

In itself this is not too much of a surprise. Many clients react to the realization of their giftedness in the same way I did: initial relief, often accompanied by tears, is followed by a dismissive shake of the head and a state of defiant skepticism.

However, for most clients, initial rejection dissolves in the face of reality as their life events and responses consistently mirror the criteria for giftedness so aptly identified by other writers.

For others, however, acceptance seems impossible. “Don’t call me gifted!” they cry, as if threatened by the label.

And it seems to be the women who resist harder than the men.

Real women aren’t gifted

I find it hard to write: “I am a gifted man.” It feels like an invitation to be scorned and dismissed. “Real men aren’t gifted,” says the distorted logic inside me, “so if I’m gifted I’m not a real man”.

In the same way, it seems, gifted women are not real women.

How come? Presumably it’s because “gifted” is a label that, unlike “helpful” or “neighborly”, is perceived in a negative way.

So who might object to a gifted woman? Here is a list of possible culprits:

"Don't cry darling. You can forget those nasty books and be just like mommy now."

• Mother. Not only is her daughter a younger and prettier version of herself, but if she’s gifted she’s special in other ways too. Any mother-daughter competitiveness will swing into action around this one.
• Father. The man who says: “I want her to have the best education available.” is the same one who later says: “I’m your father and I don’t have to listen to your darn fool ideas.”
• Female friends. Women in groups can be brutal in discouraging difference. The need for affiliation has quenched many a woman’s acknowledgment of her giftedness. It doesn’t do to break ranks with the sisterhood.
• Male friends and would-be mates. Heterosexual women still seem to be largely convinced that they need a man to complete them as human beings. The male of the species is not renowned for his embrace of female superiority – other than sometimes in fantasy – so the man-needing woman keeps her enhanced sensibilities and giftedness firmly under wraps.
• Everybody else. Gifted people can be pretty high maintenance. We constantly (and often unconsciously) challenge the prevailing comfortable mood. We are emotionally intense. We are highly sensitive – to physical phenomena as well as human ones.

Given such a comprehensive list of potential offendees, why wouldn’t a girl prefer a J-Lo butt to being gifted?

Maybe the reasons start here:

An imbalance of power

Giftedness is power.

One of the most intriguing statistics in “A Woman’s Nation,” a recently released survey by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, is this: 69% of women think men resent women who have more power than they do. Only 49% of men agree.

Don't recognize yourself? The distorted visions of frightened inner males are not the truth about you.

My personal hunch – based on decades of observing people in the corporate workplace as well as my work as therapist and coach – is that the women are probably right and the men have a hard time admitting it.

To the small boy inside every man, a powerful woman carries the threatening demeanor of a posing body-builder. It’s true that not every man is dominated by his inner small boy. However, a good many are and, in the turmoil of inner male voices, the small boy always makes his contribution.

Forbes magazine recently asked a few from its list of the 100 Most Influential Women in the World for their personal reflections on power. Here are some of their responses [together with some examples of threatened inner-male reactions]:

• “Power is the ability to create change in the world” - Tensie Whelan, Executive Director, Rainforest Alliance [Oh my God! Napoleonic ambition! Worldwide change! And rainforests are only good for turning into superyachts anyway!]

• Power is not being tied to any person or any thing. “If a deal or a relationship does not make sense, I can walk.” – Lynn Tilton, CEO, Patriarch Partners [She can walk?! Leave me? I know - I'll get her pregnant and economically dependent  and then she won't be going anywhere!]
• “Power is one’s ability to inspire positive change…to impact the global village.” – Tina Sharkey, Chairman [sic] and Global President, BabyCenter [Complete male-terror. New-age globalization combined with baby expertise.]
• Power is confronting “the demons that prevent us as human beings from living up to our full potential.” – Cheryl Dorsey, MD, President, Echoing Green [Demons? The only demon is a woman who can be an MD as well as a President AND be running a social entrepreneurship investment company. (And that's only the start. Check her out.)]
• Power is having “the ability to change the world in powerful ways through collaborative and collective efforts.” – Linda Avey, Co-Founder and Co-President, 23and ME  [There it is again. Changing the world - and in that touchy-feely socialist way rather than just by stamping your boot on it.]

Once my inner little Christopher gets over his fears, what I find most interesting about these women’s words is that they express their interest in power in abstractions and process-oriented statements.

Of course, they are speaking for publication and would probably hide a truth such as: “What I really like about power is rubbing my mother’s/father’s/teacher’s face in their own BS!”. But on the whole I suspect that what they say is true.

Women, after all, are the process-driven gender. Males read the “Tao te Ching” to learn about power. The Tao tells them to adopt the way of the female.

Women have more power than ever before.

In  “A Women’s Nation” Mary Ann Mason reports that women receive:

• 52 percent of high school diplomas,
• 62 percent of associate’s degrees,
• 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and
• 50 percent of doctoral degrees and professional degrees.
• Women are running more than 10 million businesses with combined annual sales of $1.1 trillion.
• Women are responsible for making 80% of consumer buying decisions.

80 percent! So much for the idea of the all-decisive patriarch.

But three problems persist.

• First, I’m committing the sin of confusing giftedness with eminence. I’m doing this quite deliberately up to this point because I believe the world can benefit hugely from women being able to see that they can attain eminence. And that this eminence does not have to come by adopting the male way.
• Second, women have babies.
• Third, women have parents.

Hi there gifted one! Meet your grandmother . . . father . . . mother . . . child . . .

A major elephant in the gifted woman’s living room is that nearly 86% of women agree that women today still bear the primary responsibility for caring for their sick and elderly parents.

In addition, 85% of women believe that where both partners have jobs, it is the woman who takes on more responsibility for the home and family.

I do not believe that this should be so, and not just from the perspective of injustice. The widespread acceptance of this caring ‘responsibility’ too often results in resentful parents and correspondingly resentful children, or resentful carers and tortured elders.

However, it is a massively reinforced social pressure and may not always be denied. So, I suggest that when gifted women have babies they can be gifted mothers. Or if they must be carers, then be gifted carers.

You don’t have to be captains of industry or firebrand politicians. You can pass your unique influence on through your children, your children’s friends and your parents’ social groups.

Embrace your gifted female-ness

The recognition and understanding of the gifted is largely a female-led discipline. This is unusual in the world of psychology and human development that has largely been dominated by males. For every Melanie or Karen there are three Sigmunds, Karls, Carls, Josef’s, BFs and so on.

However, in the specific field of giftedness it is female insight and intellectual rigor that holds sway. Here are just some of the most influential names in the gifted universe:

• Leta Hollingworth
• Annemarie Roeper
• Mary Rocamora
• Linda Kreger Silverman
• Mary-Elaine Jacobsen

This is not to detract from some very significant male contributions but is intended to focus female readers on the possibility of creating a new sisterhood, one in which the chaos and difference of giftedness is embraced rather than shunned.

Don’t be eminent, be gifted

Even though I’m stuck in a male-centric view of giftedness which, taken to its full potential, results in some form of eminence, you can do better. Here’s a definition of giftedness that says nothing about achievement:

• “Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.” The Columbus Group, 1991

As you can see, being gifted does not force you into some branch of the elite. It merely means you’re different.

I’ll conclude with this extract from a paper by Linda Kreger Silverman, founder of The Columbus Group. It explains why it is so important to claim your label even if you want to do it quietly.

"Shall I embrace my giftedness or just drown it?"

“Gifted children and adults see the world differently because of the complexity of their thought processes and their emotional intensity. People often say to them, “Why do you make everything so complicated?” “Why do you take everything so seriously?” “Why is everything so important to you?”

“The gifted are “too” everything: too sensitive, too intense, too driven, too honest, too idealistic, too moral, too perfectionistic, too much for other people! Even if they try their entire lives to fit in, they still feel like misfits.

“The damage we do to gifted children and adults by ignoring this phenomenon is far greater than the damage we do by labeling it. Without the label for their differences, the gifted come up with their own label: “I must be crazy. No one else is upset by this injustice but me.”

So please. Don’t settle for crazy. Don’t be a woman. Be gifted.

Thank you.

This is a recurring question for gifted adults because the intensity of our childhood experiencing has a direct bearing on our adult gifted success. It also offers valuable clues to understanding those things that don’t work so well for us.

In particular, the question: “What fascinated me when I was three years old?” seems of special significance. This is because the passionate preoccupations of three-year olds so often seem to form the foundation of success in a wide range of gifted adults.

The number of gifted and creative artists who recall their passion from their very early years is legion.

"I danced myself out of the womb.
Is it strange to dance so soon?"
Marc Bolan. "Cosmic Dancer".

At three or less, musicians pick up violins or start hammering on drums; dancers shake their booties; painters discover negative space without realizing there was ever anything else.

As an example, if you enter: “I started drawing when I was three.” as a single statement on Google you will get nearly 150,000 responses from illustrators, artists and so on. Substituting “playing piano” brings up 3,000. “Writing” only gives rise to 9, but includes one of my favorites: “I started writing when I was three years old, but it wasn’t until I was seven that I was first published.”

If you simply enter: “I started when I was three.” you’re greeted with nearly a million dancers, skiers, stamp-collectors, violinists, riders, soccer players etc. And these are only the people who feel compelled to commit their biographies to the Internet.

Pre-occupation to Occupation

Given that three is an age that has great significance for our future, how can we use the lessons to be learned from it?

Unconsciously building a gifted future.

Lucky the child whose obvious interests attracted parental support. S/he would all-unconsciously have started on the path to mastery and clarity.

But what about those of us whose creativity didn’t manifest through a musical instrument or box of crayons? We have to look harder to see where we come from.

The effort involved in this considered examination is highly worthwhile. Through it our uniqueness becomes apparent by revealing our own history and balance of preoccupations.

I hope you’ll take the time to uncover your own. As a process it can reinforce some affectionate self-recognition as well as open the doors to greater self-understanding.

As a guide to what I mean, here are some of my early qualities:

• I was very clumsy at drawing.
• I read a great deal.
• I took every opportunity to go exploring on my own.
• I built complex houses and towns from building blocks.
• I focused a great deal of attention on my mother’s welfare, not least because we moved every six months or so, sometimes halfway round the globe.

How does that translate into today?

• I still read a great deal. And, as reading is practice for writing, I write a great deal.
• I’m very independent, an explorer in thought and in location.
• I have always worked with complex systems demanding deconstruction, re-architecture and re-construction. This applies to my work in computing, in writing, and of course in the ongoing task of understanding and re-framing human nature.
• My “taking care of mom” shows itself in dozens of ways, from a tendency to be over-solicitous in personal relationships to volunteering my time on committees. Many a professional or non-profit organization has reason to be grateful to my mother!
• I’m still very clumsy at drawing.

Your mind is an iceberg

If your present life is more or less in accord with your three-year old preoccupations then you’re probably reasonably happy.

Out of sight but in the mind. What's concealed can slow you to a crawl.

However, if you’re finding it hard to follow through on your early enthusiasms, it could be due to your unconscious mind. Like the lower part of an iceberg, this is the hidden power that dominates your actions.

Brain research has made it clear that it is the unconscious, not the conscious, that rules our decision-making and thus our lives. (Check out Jonah Lehrer’s book: “How We Decide” for confirmation of this.)

Experts of all kinds have contributed their estimates as to when the development of our unconscious mind is ‘finished’.  Such estimates typically fall in an age range between two and seven.

So where does that leave us?

Where does that leave us? Perhaps shockingly, it leaves us being managed by the assumptions and beliefs of – let’s average it – a five-year old. With our mind like an iceberg, our consciousness is the ten percent above water while the real weight and power lies massively beneath the surface.

This explains so much of what we find challenging. Our conscious mind says: “Let’s go to New York and look at some art,” but our unconscious wants to go surfing. With nine tenths of us pulling one way we are bound to end up in some compromise situation.

In this case, rather than New York it might be a trip to Malibu. There you can spend the days at Surfrider Beach while taking side trips to the Getty Museum.

That kind of compromise might seem harmless enough but supposing your conscious mind is saying: “I need to save for a rainy day,” while your unconscious is saying: “There’s no point saving. Someone will just steal it from you.”?

The inevitable – yes, inevitable – consequence is that you will effect a compromise between these two positions. And it’s unlikely that it will meet all your conscious self’s need to save. So you will fret . . . and fret . . . and fret.

I want to correct any impression that I assume that the childhood unconscious tends to be irresponsible. It often isn’t. There are plenty of people who consciously think: “I ought to have more fun,” while their five-year old unconscious is nudging them to keep working “just in case.”

What to do about it

When our early preoccupations work for us, life is grand. But what happens when they don’t?

Gifted and creative individuals are highly sensitive.  We feel conflict intensely and will take great steps to try to resolve it. The sense of going where we don’t want to – under the control of something hidden -  is thus very painful and discouraging for us.

It’s never going to be easy, but the key to tolerating such apparent conflict and inability to achieve our objectives is first of all to make our five-year old selves real. Picture yourself back in that tiny body, mentally recreate a room in which you spent a lot of time, and allow these questions to pass across your mind:

• Who were you then? How did you experience yourself?
• Where were you? What events and family dynamics were determining your life?
• Where did you go to be yourself and what would you do there?
• What were the actions of your parents/caretakers showing you about their belief systems?
• Did they all send the same message? Were  you able to reconcile any conflicting messages and if so, how?

You can call for reinforcements when you know what you need to overcome.

The more clearly you are able to re-experience yourself at that time, the more understandable your current conflicts will become.  And, much more importantly, the more you’ll be able to work with them rather against them.

This is because by revealing your most counter-productive beliefs to yourself you discover where your conscious will needs reinforcement.

You can use this information to help you find the appropriate assistance to tug you in your preferred direction. This assistance might come in the form of a person, a book, or some other form of external energy. You’ll recognize it when you need it.

And now . . .

I’d love to hear how your fascinations as a three-year old reveal themselves today.  Just add your comments below and tell us your story.

Thanks.